


I've Fallen In Love With A Man On The Run

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes & Winter Soldier are Different People, Bucky Barnes & Winter Soldier are Different Personalities, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Ignoring Infinity War/Endgame entirely, M/M, Mutant Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25419781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: After the fiasco in Siberia, Tony let them all go. She kept track of them, but she let them run free and do whatever they wanted. She took the time to put herself back together, to do damage control, and to think. So much got said and undone, and more than anything she needed to think about how she wanted to go forward concerning Barnes and everything he'd done.That's all interrupted by a cargo hold full of Asgardians with Thor and Loki at the helm seeking refuge on Earth. Naturally, the only person around to help them is Tony, and that's exactly what she does. It's to her surprise and his credit when Loki approaches her, subdued with gratitude, and offers her one extravagant magical favour in return for the months worth of fighting she's done to establish a home for the Asgardians.With Loki's gift in the forefront of her thoughts, she turns back to the issue of Barnes, and she thinks she might have a solution.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Tony Stark/The Winter Soldier
Comments: 31
Kudos: 235





	1. Royal Favours

The Accords and Siberia taught her a lot of things, very fast and extremely hard. The emotional whiplash had been violent and sudden, and it had nearly broken her neck the same way it broke her heart. 

She hadn't wanted it to come to this. She'd wanted to work with Steve, to try and be better. She was always trying to be better. That's what Iron Man was about, what every action she'd taken since Afghanistan was about - solving the problems she'd created and taking responsibility for all the things she'd done. Steve didn't seem to see it that way, and perhaps that had been her fault.

On the helicarrier, she'd been smarting from seeing him for the first time, the deluge of negative feelings his very face showered her in were in no way his fault. Her sudden and intense desire to fight, to beat back the feelings even his _name_ brought about was something she'd done her best to bite back, to swallow down. His insult to her person and her building had made that more difficult, but she'd not slung mud back at him for it. 

After that, she'd _tried_. She'd done what she could in the manner she knew how - she built for her new team, funded them and helped them get what they needed. She gave them the material things they lacked and more - particularly Bruce and Steve, who had no lives already established - and tried to accept and understand them. It obviously hadn't worked out, otherwise she wouldn't be in the Avengers compound alone, but she'd done what she could at the time. 

But the nightmares were relentless. 

Battling alcoholism, recovering from palladium poisoning and working on her depression and anxiety would be enough for any one person, she imagined, but the _nightmares_ were the worst out of them all. Time and time again, she was haunted by the fleet she seen in the stars, one she _knew_ would come again. It was practically guaranteed. If some low-level boss like Loki could lead a small contingency here, that meant that whoever had given it to him - and the Sceptre too, since Thor said it wasn't Loki's originally, come to think of it - would know where they were, what they were capable of. Odds were that next time, should they come better prepared with a larger fleet, there would be no escape for them. And not just New York, but the world as a whole. 

So, she built Ultron. Was she wrong to do so? She doesn't know. It had been the right move to soothe her mind, to try and assure herself that maybe, if they just planned ahead, they could have a backup plan that could work. She likes to think that everything had been fine until they returned with the Sceptre. Well, really, until _Wanda_ had gotten into her head. The nightmares apparently hadn't been bad enough as they were, huh? Yeah, let's just ratchet that shit up to eleven and strand you on a space rock with your dead friends so you can have a prime seat for the destruction of Earth. Not a problem. 

Thanks, _Wanda_. 

She should have sent that bitch back to Clint's farm if he wanted to keep her so bad. 

She thought, too, about how 'the Mandarin' and Project: INSIGHT seemed to happen concurrently. She wondered if she might have been able to help Steve and Natasha had she not been stranded and alone herself, lost and panicking in the midwest. She wondered why Steve never tried to contact her, since he actually had no idea about the Mandarin, Aldritch, none of it. 

Whatever. It didn't matter. 

It _didn't_. 

And, of course, once Ultron came down, so did the hammer of judgement on her shoulders. She still didn't know whether attempting to build Ultron - corruption notwithstanding - was actually the right thing to do. Steve seemed to liken it to INSIGHT, but the androids weren't meant to harm, they were supposed to be emergency resources - machines capable of diving into burning buildings without issue, lifting rubble and air-evacuating civilians. They were supposed to be expendable, their loss supposed to replace lost human life. All Ultron was meant for was a guiding hand, much the same way that JARVIS handled her suits, and the central node she could connect to for solving issues and updating code. What made Ultron come alive, vengeful and angry, was the Sceptre, not her, and she's not convinced the disaster would have even happened at all had she not taken that fucking thing into her Tower. 

But, at the end of day, the machines were her fault, and Sokovia rested on her shoulders. She had to take that blame, and that's what she did. She took responsibility. And yeah, maybe the experience with SHIELD and HYDRA had left a bad taste in Steve's mouth, had made the active criminals that she was shielding nervous, but demonstrating a willingness to own up to poor decisions that cost lives was _the right thing to do_. She had thought that was understood. 

Sure, the Accords weren't perfect. There were a lot of limitations that would have hindered the team to the point of coming back around to being a hazard again, but she and her team of lawyers and lobbyists were already in the process of making amendments and adaptations. She was working on it, like she always was, trying to balance two agendas and make the best of both worlds. Even if they didn't agree with the whole thing - even if they were going to go against it (like she knew would eventually happen), the point wasn't to lick boots, but to prove that they were willing to cooperate, to make amends.

To take responsibility. 

But Steve wouldn't hear it. He didn't understand that the restrictions she had on the team were there to _protect_ them. Steve didn't understand what would happen if someone outside the team actually got their hands on Wanda. Hell, even Natasha and Clint no longer had an organization to protect them, so that came down to Tony as well. But Wanda in particular was a walking fucking bomb, and everyone knew it, even if no one else would admit it. 

Yes, she was a young woman, decisions wracked by grief and fear. She was a kid, but she was also a superpowered HYDRA-affiliated terrorist who tried to end the world. She only switched sides when she seemed to realize that when Ultron said "end all organic life", he really meant her as well. So, yeah, she was young and stupid and yeah, Tony shouldn't have built Ultron, but Wanda is just as guilty for what happened to Sokovia as Tony is (if not more, since she was terrorizing it long before Tony and her bots got there).

Only Tony seemed to care that if the authorities got their hands on Wanda, best case scenario, she's deported to Sokovia and dies of old age in prison and worst case scenario, she's kept in a lab by the Pentagon, experimented on to the point of torture. Tony knew, because that's what they wanted to do to her and the suits in 2010. She made weapons for these people, _sold_ them to these people. She knows what they want, what they think like and what next steps they would take. Once upon a time, she would have been the one they came to for the design and manufacture of the equipment they'd need. 

And sometimes, to her own horror, she sketches out in her mind what she would have made for them. 

She knew the true extent of the danger Wanda was in, and she thought they all did too. 

And maybe, above all, that's where she went wrong. She gave them too much credit.

Maybe they _didn't_ know anything - all these facts, the insider's knowledge of how the world worked were obvious to her. Maybe the others in her team had no idea. After all, the worlds they all came from varied drastically. Clint and Natasha might know how to torture, even have been tortured, but they'd never been hired to make the equipment to do it. No one but her - including Bruce - had actually read anything Selvig had left behind when Loki stole the Tesseract. She's damn near certain that no one read the entirety of the Accords - Steve barely skimmed it, a predetermined frown creasing his forehead. How many of them had spent terraflops of processing power sifting through the HYDRA data dump? 

None of them. 

And then it all comes down to the reason she was tempted to throw away nearly a decade of sobriety - the Winter Soldier. 

What was she supposed to do, supposed to feel?

On one hand, she hated Howard's guts. Didn't necessarily want to see him dead, but she wasn't really sad to see him go. She'd loved her mother, and had been left vacant without her. Their deaths had left her vacant and untethered, vulnerable to someone exactly like Obadiah, and so had her life begun to spiral before she was even legal to vote. 

On the other, Barnes wasn't even really responsible for it. He'd been a prisoner, body, mind and soul, twisted and bent and broken for seventy years. The thought makes her heart twist in agonized sympathy. She'd nearly cracked under three months, let alone seven decades. 

But that didn't absolve Steve. Steve - who preached about trust and sharing secrets and burdens and perogatives - had hidden away not only the man responsible for several dozen high-profile assassinations, but kept the reality of her parents' deaths from her for _years_. 

More than Barnes, more than the deaths themselves, Steve's lies and hypocrisy was what tore her apart. That's why she attacked them in Siberia. Sleep-deprived, emotional and high-strung even before that, she had made the choice that this betrayal merited violence. She had wanted to hurt Steve back. 

She'd been left for dead instead, paid back for her weakness tenfold, as usual. T'Challa's mercy on her was what saved her from dying alone in that bunker, flightless and freezing, an already weak sternum fractured anew. 

It had been Steve to blame, not Barnes, and she did regret hurting him. He hadn't really deserved it. 

But she set those thoughts aside as she exited the Avengers compound, watching almost in a daze as a massive space ship settles down, opens up, and out walks Thor flanked by hundreds of refugee Asgardians. 

"Well, fuck."

* * *

Eleven months. 

It took eight months to get the Asgardians settled. She's sure her money helped that along quite well, with the land in Norway easy to acquire and well-paid twenty-four-hour crews having a whole development lived-in ready. 

The immigration process had been less fun, and the paperwork for identification had been a nightmare. But a couple dozen lawyers and a shit ton of money later, she'd managed it. 

She's established Asgard, Norway. 

She was there visiting Thor, wandering the little town she'd put in his name, when she was approached by Loki himself, dressed down into a business casual suit of black and deep green. 

"Tony, may I have a moment of your time?"

"Uh, sure Reindeer Games. What can I do for you?"

He fell into step beside her, offering a congenial smile. "Rather, what can I do for _you._ "

"I got you all you documentation. I can't cover up a crime." She glared at him over the rim of her sunglasses. 

He snorted. "I'm a trickster, not a moron. If I'm to wreak havoc, it's not going to be in my brand new home. No, I'm here to offer a favour, rather than ask for one."

"Oh, do tell."

He took her hand in his, bringing it to his lips. "Sincerely, you've done more for Asgard in this last year than Thor or I have done in the last hundred. To be adrift and alone with limited resources and no hope is a desolate existence, and I felt that keenly. I want to thank you, as sincerely as you'll allow me, and offer a personal favour."

"What kind of personal favour?"

Loki faced her. "Magic is the one thing this planet lacks. At the very least, it's uncommon and well-hidden. As a token of my gratitude for your unwavering loyalty to my brother and my people, I want to offer you a spell, for anything I am capable of. It doesn't have to be immediate, and there is no expiry on my offer. One magical act, as massive or miniscule as you'd like."

She opened her mouth to respond, and her mind ricocheted to the one person she owed, someone she had decided also needed her help, should he accept it. "What if I need it done on someone else?"

He inclined his head. "I will do whatever you desire, to the extent I am able. The wish need only be yours."

She nodded slowly. "I'm going to hold you to that. I may have something in mind."

He broke into a knowing smirk. "Of course you do. You're always a set ahead."

"I choose to take that as a compliment."

"Oh, it is." He purred. "Should circumstance had of permitted it, I would have jumped at a chance to be at your side. But alas, this will have to suffice."

She didn't really know what to say to that.

"I await your command, and you know where to find me." He bowed and strode away.

"Well, fuck."


	2. Disillusionment And Secrets

The thing is, she knew where Barnes had been taken. She knew. 

"Hey, Captain Soviet, you got a minute?"

From across the field, Barnes startled so hard she actually felt bad for him. The goats around him balked, but settled back easily enough. He had paled, like he'd seen a ghost, though. 

"Uh, yeah." He dropped the hay bale he'd been hauling over to the pasture. The kids of the nearby village had been helping him, but they didn't seem to care one way or another whether or not she was here. The oldest-looking girl picked up the bale with the help of a smaller girl and they finished carrying it off. 

He wiped his hand off on his red skirt - clearly Wakandan make - and adjusted the scarf that hid the remains of his shoulder. He looked healthy and fit, clear-headed and coherent. 

"I guess this is where it ends, huh?" He said solemnly. 

She cocked her head. "Ends?"

He raised his chin, a stern set coming to his shoulders. "Ends. To finish what you started in Siberia."

She recoiled, violently shaking her head. "No! I'm not here for that." 

His shoulders slumped. "Then what are you here for?"

"I came to make an offer." She sighed. "I've never been very good at explaining myself, or expressing my feelings. But what happened in Siberia wasn't about you."

He frowned. "How? It was me - I stared right at that camera."

"Steve knew for years before that." She let her gaze wander across the fields. "He knew you killed my parents. He preached at me about unity and being honest and working as a team, but he knew - and he said nothing. I shouldn't have attacked either of you - you especially - but I'd had enough. Enough of his double standards, condescension and bullshit. He never took me seriously, not for a goddamn second, and in that moment, I knew he'd never even seen me as an ally. All I ever was to him was a bank account, a tool-"

"An asset." He finished quietly. 

She blew out a breath. "Look, it wasn't about you. And I need to make up for that."

He shook his head. "You don't owe me anything."

"Shut up. Yes I do." She forced herself to meet his gaze, far too sympathetic to the woman who'd blown his fucking arm off. "I want to build you another arm. I'll build it how you want it - as normal or outlandish as you want."

He glanced down at the hidden stump. "There's a lot of damage inside too."

"I've got all the money in the world. I'll hire however many specialist surgeons are necessary. I don't care what it costs, or what I have to do to make it happen."

He breathed out sharply. "Okay. I wouldn't mind having an arm again."

"This part is completely optional, and I want you to consider it very, very carefully."

"Ooookay."

"I know the Soldier's programming is still there. I know Shuri can't undo all that damage." She held up a hand. "But magic might be able to do it. I've got an offer from Loki, a favour for helping settle the Asgardians. For all his faults, he's a strong magic-user. If you want to attempt it, I'll tell him to remove the programming."

His expression was unfathomable for a long moment and she struggled not to squirm under that vibrant blue. "What would that even look like?"

"To be honest, I have no idea. I wanted to ask if you'd want to try before asking him. I didn't want you to feel pressured to accept."

It felt like he was staring right through her. "I want it out."

"Cool. We'll do the arm first, then I'll get Loki down here and we'll see what he can do."

* * *

In the end, what Barnes settled for wasn't too much different from what he'd had. 

The arm was proportionate to his flesh one, only about an ounce more in weight, and a brushed, dark steel. Well, not true steel - titanium-gold and vibranium (thanks, Shuri) with a matte finish that could much more easily be dismissed as a glove. She'd added the sensory receptors that Vision had, making the arm sensitive to pressure, proximity, heat, cold and texture. She'd hired Hellen Cho to be the surgeon doing the attachment, and several other doctors had been flown in from across the world to be under her direction. The removal of the previous arm was a delicate situation, and the flesh underneath was in even more danger. 

Tony had stood by the operating room window for the sixteen hours the surgery took, watching with rapt attention. She held her breath when they attached the arm, hands fisted tightly at her sides, only letting it out when the diagnostic she had up and running on her phone lit up green. 

Hellen's gentle hands carefully cauterized the skin to the shoulder, leaving a much neater and smaller scar than he'd had the last time around. 

"Move him to recovery." Hellen directed the nurses in the room with her. "He's stable."

| | | 

She was at his side when he awoke, some six hours after the surgery finished. 

She'd been running diagnostics in tandem with monitoring his vitals, making adjustments for his body metabolizing the anesthesia, and holding her breath. 

"Tony?" He squinted at her, even in the dimness of the room. His voice was hoarse and scratchy. 

"Right here, buddy." She reached out and cupped his face. 

"Hi."

She chuckled. "Hi. Here." She grabbed the cup of ice chips, holding it between her thighs as she fished one out and brought it to his lips. "This will help."

He took the chip easily, sucking on it idly as he came back to full awareness. "How did it go?"

"It's on there." She replied. "You're the last test, though. Tell me what you can do and how you feel."

She slid her hand down from his jaw and to the ball of his shoulder, tears coming to her eyes at the reverent way he stared at it. 

"I can- Am I supposed to be able to feel your hand?"

"Yeah, you are." She dragged her hand down the length of his arm, watching goosebumps erupt across his chest. "Is it too sensitive?"

"Maybe? It's been a long time since I had an arm that could feel things." He shifted, metal fingers wrapping around hers. "Holy shit."

"It's hooked up directly into your neural pathways." She explained. "Right to your nerves. If you feel pain from it, you need to tell me immediately - at the end of the day, it's still a machine, and if you're feeling pain, your fleshy stuff is what's actually compromised."

"I'll keep that in mind." He squeezed her fingers, delight illuminating his features. "Can I touch you? I wanna see-"

"Go for it." She pulled her chair closer, offering her arm to him. Reverently, he traced along her hand and up her forearm to her elbow, testing his force. 

"I can feel your calluses, how soft your skin is here." His thumb ran along the inside of her wrist. "Holy shit."

"That's the point, Red October."

He ignored her teasing, reaching up and running his hand through her hair. "Wow."

She let him, her chest swelling with warmth at the unburdened joy written across his face. 

"You know, right before I was deployed, I went to the Exhibit of the Future." He twisted a curl around his index finger, grinning. "Stevie and I took dates, and we watched Howard Stark make his car levitate. I was never smart enough to make it in science, but man, I've always loved stuff like this. And to see it with my own eyes . . . Man. It's surreal."

"I didn't know that. That you liked tech."

"I doubt it ever made it into my description as Steve's sidekick in the war." He grinned crookedly. "But I do. It's so amazing to watch the future being made. It's even crazier, because I know that to you, this is mundane, everyday stuff. You live in the future all the time."

"I guess so." She hummed, leaning into it as he dragged his fingertips agains her scalp. "You'll like my nanotech, then."

His eyes lit up. "What's nanotech?"

| | | 

The weeks he spent in mandatory recovery (though he was fully healed by the end of the second week) were spent in Tony's Malibu mansion, away from prying eyes and deeply immersed in all the futuristic tech he could dream of laying his eyes on. 

She never got tried of seeing his excitement, felt refreshed at the way he'd listen raptly to every word she said. She couldn't help but laugh when Dum-E tottled over to him for pets and he did do, talking to the machine much the same way one would a small child. 

For her part, she felt deep coils of affection for him start to strangle her heart. Such a kind, gentle man was twisted into such a desperate monster with no hope of rescue. It was heartwrenching to think that someone had seen the curiosity, life, vibrancy in his eyes and made it their mission to stamp it out. She was more and more grateful that she had a chance to make things right, to see that light come back in full force. 

She took him to the Avengers Compound to have Loki work his magic, eager to see what he might be like without the dark edges haunting him.

* * *

When Loki walked out of the room, he was paler than normal. 

"What? What happened?"

"I was successful." He said immediately, then sighed. "Well, to a point."

"What did you do?"

"It's best you see." Loki gestured her to follow, and he led her back into the room. 

On the bed lay a young man, maybe twenty-five, in army tan and green, brown hair short and deeply asleep. Across the room, on the bed Barnes had laid down on, was the Barnes she was familiar with. He was sitting upright, staring at them warily. 

"The trauma is deeply bound to the body." Loki explained. "The entity of the Winter Soldier has no other form, but the entity of James Barnes does. My task was to separate James from the Soldier's programming, and it is done, but they are physically separated as well."

"Oh." She glanced between them, taking in the drafted youth and the tortured assassin. "Fuck."

"Indeed." Loki agreed. "I can fuse them again, if you wish, but there is no other way to 'return' James to his former self other than this."

"I'll figure it out. Thank you, Loki."

"For the assistance you rendered my people, it's the least I could do." The prince bowed and saw himself out, leaving her alone in the room with two halves of the same man. 

Bucky - the young James Barnes - only shifted slightly in his sleep, body much more lean and round, the hard lines of stress and middling adulthood not yet come to grace his skin. The Winter Soldier - God, was she going to have to name him? - sat stiff and wary, watching her much the same way a beaten dog in a pound would do. 

"Hey, Soldier, I've got a favour to ask."

He didn't twitch, but his icy eyes seemed to sparkle. 

"You mind carrying Bucky upstairs for me? I've got a room for him and, uh, probably you, by extension."

The Soldier stood, gently scooping up Bucky's unconscious body and waiting for her to led them. She did so, walking them through the compound - and man, was she grateful now that it was empty - and upstairs to the sleeping quarters. She led them to a room in the back, empty of any personal affects, but with large, warm windows and a soft, wide bed. 

"You can put him down here."

The Soldier did so, still watching her. 

"Just give me two seconds - I'll be right back."

She left the two (?) men alone in the room, gently closing the door before falling back against the wall, hand to heart, and sliding down it. 

"Fuck."


End file.
